March movie reviews

Why is everything madness all the time? What has happened to us as a people?

Let Me In [Blu-ray] (2010)
This is a creepy vampire movie. Creepy because it’s about little kids. And it’s supposed to be about first love, but one of the first love people is a hundred year old vampire who looks 12. And of course, a boy who gets bullied at school. You know what’s awesome when you’re a 12 year old boy who gets bullied at school? Vampire girlfriend.
Jack Goes Boating (2010)

Bleech. Seymour Hoffman changes himself to impress that weird woman who plays Michael Scott’s girlfriend on The Office. She’s weird too and thinks everyone is trying to rape her. Or she does get raped a lot, the movie leaves that ambiguous. I dunno. It’s strange and too “indie.”

Stone (2010)

Um… the guy who plays Worm in Rounders is in this…with Robert Dinero. It should have been better than it was. As it is, it was NOT good. Worm is in prison, applying for parole. Deniro is his parole officer who is like a super religious guy who doesn’t believe in second chances, but he also beats his wife. Worm sends his own wife to plead his case with Deniro. They end up having an affair. So now of course, Deniro has to approve Worm’s parole. Blah.

A Handful of Dust (1988)

Adaptation of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Can I just say the movie is all Victorian and la di da and Paddington Estates and then she leaves her husband for lover… but THEN it has the bestest ending ever! Not worth renting the movie and it’s over 20 years old and based on a book, so I’ll just tell you: the husband goes on safari “to clear his head,” and ends up being kidnapped by a madman in the jungle who keeps him prisoner to read books! DUUUDE! If more movies ended with people who go “to find themselves” being kidnapped by illiterate madmen, more people would stay their damn asses home and take care of their responsibilities.

Life As We Know It [Blu-ray] (2010)

It’s the blond girl from Grey’s Anatomy and Fergie’s husband. They hate each other, but their best friends are married. Then their best friends die and leave them joint custody of their one year old daughter. And they move in together to raise the child. Awww. It’s just like Romeo and Juliet!

Abandoned [Blu-ray] (2010)

I rented this because it was Brittany Murphy’s last film. She died so young. SO SO SO YOUNG! Oh, this movie is awful though. If she weren’t dead, I would now be threatening to kill her. Alas. R.I.P.

For Colored Girls [Blu-ray] (2010)

I didn’t hate this movie. It’s dramatic. Real real bad things happen to the characters, but there’s no preachy message and they sort of triumph in the end. You know, as much as you can triumph after your family has been murdered, you’ve been raped by your date and gotten HIV from your closeted husband.

Superheroes (2006)

It’s a movie but it looks like a documentary. It’s about a group therapy…um…group for injured war veterans. We see it through the eyes of the weird 20-year-old volunteer who is videotaping the sessions. He befriends one of the vets. They go on a camping trip together. Raise your hands if you think this ends well.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles [Those Aren’t Pillows Edition] (1987)

This is movie was okay. I’d heard so much about it through the years, I thought it would be awesome. Instead, it was a series of inane problems followed by even more inane solutions. You’re snowed in at an airport? Sleep at the airport until the flights head out in the morning. There. I’ve made this movie 10 minutes long and more interesting. I did laugh at the wrong way down the highway part.

Welcome to the Rileys (2010)

Man goes on a business trip to New Orleans. Goes to a strip club. Meets a stripper about the age of his dead daughter. Decides to move in with her to take care of her. His wife in Chicago decides to come down to help. O_O. Um. How come it’s always the white hooker girls who find salvation through the sex industry?

Never Let Me Go (2010)
You don’t know what this movie is about at first…so I’m not sure I should say. I liked it, think you should see it. It elicits interesting moral questions. But the characters aren’t annoying.

Conviction (2010)

You know where all the characters are annoying? In this movie. It’s based on the true story of a high school drop out who gets her GED, goes to college, graduates law school and passes the bar after her brother is convicted of murder.

Megamind

This movie wasn’t awful…though there’s about forty minutes sorta right in the middle where you will sigh and say “this movie is awful.” I really don’t think it’s for kids…unless you’ve got some twisted kids over there…in which case I don’t think they should watch this movie either…they might get ideas. Overlordy ideas. The premise is that there is a good superhero and a bad supervillain and one day the bad guy wins. What now?

You Again

Now THIS is an awful movie. I just don’t get it. The cast: Kristen Bell, Betty White, Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Curtis should have been able to do better with this premise of two generations of high school rivalries facing the prospect of becoming family via marriage. But nope. It’s terrible from the first “oh look Kristen Bell is the ugly girl” scene to the “look now everybody is dancing the Macarena together” final scene.

Dark Victory

I must have been in a Bette Davis mood one day, cause Netflix keeps sending me these old Davis movies. In this one she is a pants wearing, scotch drinking horse rider from a wealthy family. She gets diagnosed with an incurable glioma, but her family and friends decide to lie and say the surgery was successful. She finds out the truth. Dun dun dun. It’s okay.

Persepolis

This is an animated motion picture version of the autobiographical graphic novel of this Iranian ex patriot’s life. It’s excellent. You love her as a little girl, love her family and are sad about what happens to them and their country. Yep, I feel sorry for Iran. That’s some good storytelling right there.

CJ7

This is another movie from the Ku-Fu Hustle people. It’s about a single dad struggling to send his kid to a fancy prep school even though they are so poor the kid wears hand me downs from the dump to school. He is teased mercilessly and one day throws a tantrum in the toy store cause he wants the hot new toy all the other kids have. His dad goes rummaging around the dump and finds something quite special. CJ7! It’s cute.

Shaolin Soccer

Again, same people as Kung Fu hustle, but nowhere as good. It’s weird and doesn’t really make any sense.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The new one. I’ve never seen the original (I have enough problems sleeping without Freddy nightmares.) But I had a hunch the remake would be lame enough for me to handle. I was right. Meh. One cool fight scene toward the end, but the lines were your hackneyed C list movie level.

Friday the 13th

Ditto. The new version is lame. (I did see the original of this one.) It stars Rory’s doofus first love from Gilmore Girls. Everybody dies by variations of getting stabbed in the head… after a while it loses the gore factor. Ooh, there is a whole Lagavulin scene in it though, just for @astinto.

Case 39

Oh. My. God. I picked up this Renee Zwellwegger flick and expected the utter worst. She plays a social worker who has 38 cases of neglected kids on her plate when her boss comes over and hands her a new one. Yeah, lame right? Uh uh. Thirty minutes later, I’m screaming my head off, swearing off having further contact with any children anywhere and trying to hide. Good lord it scared the crap out of me!

Not Easily Broken

Er… I don’t know why Blockbuster sent me this tale of a marriage on the rocks. There’s a lot of baptist church scenes and crazy, neck snapping black women emasculating their poor black husbands until they run straight into the arms of a white woman, so naturally I blamed Tyler Perry. But no, tis reverend TJ Jakes what was to blame. Awful.

Ace Ventura: when nature calls

No clue why, of all the Jim Carrey comedies, Blockbuster would send the *sequel* to Ace Ventura. I mean, how am I to understand what’s happening without the benefit of the original?! I half watched it while falling asleep. Wretched.

Middle Men

Owen Wilson’s brother plays a straight man who gets mixed up with the inventors of online p*rn. He sees the dollar signs and spirals into a world of mobsters and kiddie p*rnographers. It’s decent.

My Soul to Take

Is in the boogie man genre of horror. There are some gruesome deaths, you aren’t quite sure who the killer is until the end, so it serves it’s purpose. And it’s got a black kid!

I am love

This movie is in Italian. It’s set in Italy. The cinematography is simply breathtaking. Did I do that right? That’s the classy way of saying an arty movie sucks, yes? It’s about a redheaded Russian housewife who is a whore. O_o

You will meet a tall dark stranger

Ugh. Yet another in what I’m calling the “Viagra Genre,” of films. Basically, Anthony Hopkins is 400 years old, leaves his 300 year old wife and marries a 20-year-old hooker. Then his daughter’s husband leaves her for the across the hall neighbor who changes without drawing her window blinds and he steals a novel from a guy in a coma. Ugh. Retarded. The whole thing is retarded. #NoSarahPalin

Let Me In was all right – well made and all that, but I did have issues with a vampire movie where it was clear from the outset that the vampire never posed a threat to any sympathetic character. (Twilight would have been tolerable if I could have held out hope that Justin Bieber With Fangs was on the verge of killing the Chick With One Facial Expression.) On an unrelated note – I totally needed a vampire girlfriend in junior high school.